Bonham was very influenced by Soul and R&B drummers. A major influence was Bernard Purdie. I believe that the "Purdie Shuffle" which he played on tracks like "Babylon Sisters" and "Home At Last" by Steely Dan influned Bonham's beat on "Fool In The Rain."

First off, pocketman is right about Bernard Purdie and the half-time shuffle, the figure is generally considered his brainchild. The interesting thing is, and I'm pretty sure but not positive about this, Purdie's most famous use of it in a song (Babylon Sisters) was recorded after Fool In The Rain, but the influence for Fool in the Rain is definitely Purdie.

In several earlier versions of 'Moby Dick,' (Including Royal Albert Hall footage) Bonham starts the solo off with a figure where he plays a swing pattern on the snare and toms simultaneously that is a direct homage to Max Roach's 'The Drum also Waltzes.'

One book I read said that Bonham was very much into cream and Ginger Baker, and you can hear this was definitely an influence on his thunderous snare-bass-tom fills as Baker played similar patterns before him. Buddy Rich did at times too. I think Rich was Bonham's influence for drum sound. The tuning is very similar between the two. He credited the bass drum triplet inspiration to a Vanilla Fudge record, I believe a cover of the Beatles 'Ticket to Ride,' thinking that Carmine Appice was playing one bass drum when he was really playing two.

As far as Bonham's influence over other drummers, I really think it is so massive you could write a whole book about it. You can hear obvious influences in 70's-80's guys like Bobby Rondinelli, Cozy Powell, Nicko McBrain, and Frankie Banali up to more modern guys like Stephen Perkins, Danny Carey and Jon Theodore. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that 80 or 90% of rock drummers out there have taken something from his playing and would probably quote him as an influence.

His exact kit sizes are even being used more on stages. The guy from the Killers plays a Bonham set. So does the guy from the Black Crowes. So does Joey Castillo. So does Taylor Hawkins. Abe Laboriel Jr. plays a kit that has even bigger sizes but was probably Bonham influenced. If you look in a music catalog you'll find more kits with 24" and 26" bass drums then you ever would have 10 years ago. Those were mostly custom sizes. Just last year, Paiste re-released Giant Beats, the cymbals he made famous from Zeppelin II--IV. 2oo2's are Paiste's most successful line largely because of him. The black label versions of the sizes he played go for double what they are worth on eBay because people are looking for vintage Bonham. He still has the drum sound everyone is after. Hope this helps somewhat.

As pointed out in the Bonham biography "A Thunder of Drums" Bonham was definitely influenced by Joe Morello of the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Listen to the version of "Castilian Drums" on Morello's drummerworld page, you will hear a lot of things that Bonham later utilized such as playing with his hands, triplets between hands and right foot, and double strokes on the bass drum.

Hey Synthetik! With all do respect, OF COURSE it doesn't sound totally Bonham! That would be impossible. No one drummer sounds like another. That's the beauty of it. Portnoy doesn't need to sound exactly like who he's paying tribute to, in order to be successfull at doing that. I think he does an excellent performance here. And, he wouldn't want to sound exactly like Bonzo anyway. He wants to sound like himself playing Bonzo. Take Care and Play On!

Hey Synthetik! With all do respect, OF COURSE it doesn't sound totally Bonham! That would be impossible. No one drummer sounds like another. That's the beauty of it. Portnoy doesn't need to sound exactly like who he's paying tribute to, in order to be successfull at doing that. I think he does an excellent performance here. And, he wouldn't want to sound exactly like Bonzo anyway. He wants to sound like himself playing Bonzo. Take Care and Play On!

I wasn't dissing Mike. I see that he did his own thing. I like the sound of his Tama kit as well. I have the DVD on order.

after messing around with 6/8 blues i was flipping around my CDs randomly and blang! i hit four-sticks. now i know there must be some drummers here who can play it but to me it has always been an everest to climb ... scratch that... an olympus mons. heck even bonzo was exhausted after playing it.
in the past i have listened to that song hundreds of times, tweaking my EQ to try and bring out the drums and really hear what master bonzo is doing. today i just went for it. pulsing the bass in a dynamic way while riding on my floor tom and accenting with my left on the mid tom and just hacking at it with all my heart and gradually i found the pattern. i'm over the moon about this i tells ye! i still haven't added in the rim clicks and the hihat pedalling but those are the ornaments...the bread and butter of the beat is down for the first time. and man is the top of my right leg burning from the effort! but i got it and the funny thing is i still have no idea how to count it or even chart it...i will just have to heart it.

I've tried to play it and I believe I've come up with something that sounds close but--agreed, it's really tough to figure out exactly what he's doing, so it's probably not spot on, I put the rim clicks in randomly. And no I have no idea how to count it I just play it by feel. I do like the fact that when you break it down, as with so many sections of Bonham's solos, the footwork in 'Four Sticks' is really just him running on his pedals, but the tom patterns he plays over it, with the accents, give it such an awesome feel and make it sound much more complicated.

yeah i have a book that describes track by track history of led zep. they tried it a couple of times and it wasn't working then bonzo used four sticks and it was one take. thankfully. he was exhausted after that. according to history ive read they never performed it again.

hello you bonzos im a guy from Tenerife (Canary Islands). Useless to say anything about John. can anybody tell me which was the set of cymbals used by bonham in The Song Remains concert and Physical Graffity

hello you bonzos im a guy from Tenerife (Canary Islands). Useless to say anything about John. can anybody tell me which was the set of cymbals used by bonham in The Song Remains concert and Physical Graffity

after messing around with 6/8 blues i was flipping around my CDs randomly and blang! i hit four-sticks. now i know there must be some drummers here who can play it but to me it has always been an everest to climb ... scratch that... an olympus mons. heck even bonzo was exhausted after playing it.
in the past i have listened to that song hundreds of times, tweaking my EQ to try and bring out the drums and really hear what master bonzo is doing. today i just went for it. pulsing the bass in a dynamic way while riding on my floor tom and accenting with my left on the mid tom and just hacking at it with all my heart and gradually i found the pattern. i'm over the moon about this i tells ye! i still haven't added in the rim clicks and the hihat pedalling but those are the ornaments...the bread and butter of the beat is down for the first time. and man is the top of my right leg burning from the effort! but i got it and the funny thing is i still have no idea how to count it or even chart it...i will just have to heart it.

does anyone play this song? does anyone know how to count it?

j

I haven't figured out how to play this one yet, but... with my ear phones in, listening to the clicks, they started sounding like it was the actual sticks banging against each other while he played. Sometimes they are prominent, others not, didn't sound so mystical once I had my earbuds in and my mp3 player full of all the studio albums. I've heard subtleties and nuances like never before with those things in. I'll listen to it again, but to me (and I'm no expert) that's what it sounds like. Two big sticks flopping around in his hands while he's pounding away, like it would sound if he was playing with a pair of spoons in each hand. But, I may be wrong, the clicks could have been laid down prior to that.

__________________
"We've done four already, but now we're steady, and then they went, 1, 2, 3, 4....."

hello you bonzos im a guy from Tenerife (Canary Islands). Useless to say anything about John. can anybody tell me which was the set of cymbals used by bonham in The Song Remains concert and Physical Graffity

He used Paiste 2002 series later on but started with Giant Beats by paiste. For his hi-hats he used 15" Paiste 2002 sound edge, !8" med crash, 20" medium crash, and a 24" Ride cymbal. On occasion he used a third crash over his floor toms which was also a 18" medium crash. And sometimes he had another crash I'm pretty sure a 16" med on the left side of his hi-hat. But his standard set up was the 18", 24", 20" that is what you see in the Song Remains the Same movie.

__________________Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer, unfortunately he has never cried.

Hi all, my little sis is 15 and has acheived grade 6 drums and LOVES Zeppelin. Recently in her GCSE Music lesson she got a lower grade than usual on a piece because the other kids that were playing in her group wanted to do a RHCP number that was very un-challenging for her to play and the teacher wanted to see her do something more technical and challenging. He said a Zep song would be awesome and he'd dish out some good marks if she did some of that. Trouble is, there is a distinct lack of good Bonham books around, and the few that I have found have contradicting reviews.

Can anyone reccomend a good Led Zeppelin drum score book? I heard about one by Bill Wheeler that got slated. A lot of people said he got a lot of things wrong and had to correct pretty much every song in it. I also found one of the same title but by a different author, Joe Bergamini, but I think some people reviewing these books got confused over the authors, as both books seem to have the same title.

Can anyone let me know which one is best (author) or if there is anything even better?

Any help / pointers in the right direction would be majorly appreciated, as this is the only thing stopping my sister getting an A* in her music GCSE test at the moment.

Bonham was very influenced by Soul and R&B drummers. A major influence was Bernard Purdie. I believe that the "Purdie Shuffle" which he played on tracks like "Babylon Sisters" and "Home At Last" by Steely Dan influned Bonham's beat on "Fool In The Rain."

not to mention that Jeff Porcaro stated that his "Rosanna" beat was a combo of the "Purdie Shuffle" and Bonham's "Fool in the Rain".

and with the Ludwig double bass kit...Bonham's endorsement deal with Ludwig came from a recommendation from Carmine Appice as Zep toured with Vanilla Fudge on one of their first US tours, if not THE first tour.

While I've been searching to determine what type of shoes Bonzo wore (see the famous shoe thread...lol) I found this vintage interview from 1970. This is awesome. The newscasters talk about "The Led Zeppelin"

not to mention that Jeff Porcaro stated that his "Rosanna" beat was a combo of the "Purdie Shuffle" and Bonham's "Fool in the Rain".

and with the Ludwig double bass kit...Bonham's endorsement deal with Ludwig came from a recommendation from Carmine Appice as Zep toured with Vanilla Fudge on one of their first US tours, if not THE first tour.

Wow - didn't know that about the Porcaro - thanks - I'm going to pull those out right now and listen. Been off the site for a while and just now catching up on the posts.

That Purdie Shuffle is so slick. I'm trying to break into that right now myself, just building from the ground up by filling the gaps various ways using the snare and bass and studying Home at Last and other tunes. I think it's going OK, but not it's not trivial at all. Even on the videos he has has on this site, it's not easy to break down because he's so fluid with it, changing it up and such (maybe I should post this under Purdie's thread?)

__________________I really don't know what time it was. So I asked them if I could stay a while.

john's bass drum is so fragile in its placement throughout the song so almost naive but perfect and then he starts the tour de force bass triplets. it is a great song to learn.

j

Yeah - I just love his treatment of these slow 12/8 blues. I've been digging into these for a while myself and things are finally becomming more natural and fluid. The Coda version of "I Can't Quit.." is so cool as is the Zeppelin I version above - vintage Bonhan 12/8 blues.

__________________I really don't know what time it was. So I asked them if I could stay a while.

While I've been searching to determine what type of shoes Bonzo wore (see the famous shoe thread...lol) I found this vintage interview from 1970. This is awesome. The newscasters talk about "The Led Zeppelin"

I don't think Bonham was as concerned about what kind of shoes to play in like we are today. I have seen a lot of pictures and clips and he has a different kind of shoe on each time. I wondered the same thing for awhile but I see that sometimes he wore boots, hushpuppies, those Italian boots that were real popular in the 60's and then later on it looks like he wore sneakers. I think he could pull off those triplets regardless of what he was wearing!

__________________Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer, unfortunately he has never cried.

I don't think Bonham was as concerned about what kind of shoes to play in like we are today. I have seen a lot of pictures and clips and he has a different kind of shoe on each time. I wondered the same thing for awhile but I see that sometimes he wore boots, hushpuppies, those Italian boots that were real popular in the 60's and then later on it looks like he wore sneakers. I think he could pull off those triplets regardless of what he was wearing!

I agree. I was just joking around in relationship to some other thread about shoes...I'm sure Bonham could have worn combat boots and still cranked out Good Times Bad Times with no problem.

I agree. I was just joking around in relationship to some other thread about shoes...I'm sure Bonham could have worn combat boots and still cranked out Good Times Bad Times with no problem.

I agree. I think today drummers put to much emphasis on equipment, shoes, lighting etc. So often I hear a lot of drummers whinning " I can't play a kit if it doesn't have double bass pedal" or "I can't play a kit unless I have these certain kind of cymbals" or " I can't play unless I have three remote hi-hats." I say SHUT UP AND PLAY!!!!

__________________Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer, unfortunately he has never cried.

I agree. I think today drummers put to much emphasis on equipment, shoes, lighting etc.

Unfortunately, many drummers get too caught up in this side of the equation and spend more time looking/drooling at the equipment rather than practicing/playing...

nutha, i saw about 1/2 second of bonham's shoes in that video (in the beginning). hard to tell that they were cowboy boots....they did look black...that is an awesome video....where do people get these things? it looks like he only had 1 floor tom. was that just for that gig or did he always use 1 floor tom back in 69'?

thanks, now you have me on a youtube binge!!!! there's some good footage of moby dick on there (3 parts)...you've probably already seen it. take a look at the "Tags" from the person that posted the vids! lol..any idea where/when this is from?

Truly unique and a giant in rock. Ever notice how syncopated he got? If one reads up on the extra-musical activities of the band (books like Hammer of the Gods and Stairway to Heaven, et.al.) one may form a sort of mental image of the personalities. Like Keith Moon it makes one wonder how all that great music was made considereing the excesses. But then, that was/is another world...wasn't it?

Lately I've been listening to the last two and a half minutes of 'Dazed and Confused' off How The West Was Won right before going out at night to hear the part Bonham and Jones play during Page's guitar masturbation. Nothing gets me more pumped up. I love how simple it is, he's really just running on his pedals and playing a snare/tom pattern over it, but the feel, the places he puts the accents combined with Jones' bassline carve that nasty groove that makes it impossible to keep your head still.